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      <title> Microsoft pledges love and money to open source | The Register </title>
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    <section>
      <title>Ponies up to Apache, endorses LGPL</title>
      <para>By </para>
      <para><ulink url="http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2008/07/25/microsoft_gpl/">Gavin Clarke in San Francisco</ulink>→ <ulink url="http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Gavin%20Clarke">More by this author</ulink></para>
      <para>Published Friday 25th July 2008 18:02 GMT</para>
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      <para>
        <ulink url="http://go.theregister.co.uk/c/td/ttl/http%3A//www.theregister.co.uk/Page/security200803/">Nail down your security priorities. Ask the experts and your peers at The Register Security Debate, September 24 2008.</ulink>
      </para>
      <para><emphasis Role="strong">OSCON</emphasis> After years of hostility towards Free Software Foundation (FSF) licensing (<ulink url="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/04/22/gates_gpl_will_eat_your/">here</ulink> and <ulink url="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedSource.mspx">here</ulink>) Microsoft has announced the first in a series of PHP patches - and it's using an FSF license.</para>
      <para>Microsoft told <emphasis>The Reg</emphasis> it's submitted a patch to the community for the <ulink url="http://adodb.sourceforge.net/">ADOdb</ulink> database abstraction library for PHP to add support for the <ulink url="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=85f99a70-5df5-4558-991f-8aee8506833c&amp;amp;displaylang=en">PHP SQL Driver</ulink> developed with PHP shop Zend Technologies. The patch is under the FSF's Lesser GPL (LGPL).</para>
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      <para>And, in a further move towards greater support of open source, Microsoft is becoming a platinum member of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), paying $100,000 in sponsorship. The move follows work between the two to support the Office Open XML file formats in Apache's <ulink url="http://poi.apache.org/">POI</ulink> project.</para>
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          <imagedata fileref="http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/05/30/sam_ramji.jpg" width="173" depth="242"/>
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          <para>Ramji: watching Jakarta</para>
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        <textobject>
          <para>Sam Ramji</para>
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      <para/>
      <para>That work has also led to a "clarification" of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise to re-assure POI developers that subsets and defects of the work are also covered by OSP. Under <ulink url="http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx">OSP</ulink> Microsoft has agreed not to assert claims against implementations of certain of its technologies.</para>
      <para>Microsoft is also expanding OSP by adding to the list more than 100 protocols for interoperability between its Windows Server and the Windows client.</para>
      <para>Until now, the protocols had been available under the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (<ulink url="http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/intellectualproperty/protocols/mcpp.mspx">MCPP</ulink>) that was ordered as part of Microsoft's anti-trust settlement with the US Department of Justice. Microsoft, though, has repeatedly landed in hot water on MCPP for failing to make the pricing and terms clear to licensees.</para>
      <para>Sam Ramji, senior director of Microsoft platform strategy, told <emphasis>The Reg</emphasis> Microsoft is moving from participating in open source to becoming a contributor.</para>
      <para>Ramji, who made the announcements at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) Friday, promised "a lot more" PHP patches in the coming months now Microsoft had established processes he said clarified how employees can contribute to open source.</para>
      <para>He did not provide details of the new policy, but <emphasis>El Reg</emphasis> reported <ulink url="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/12/microsoft_dlr_closed/">reported</ulink> on Microsoft's new guidelines last month.</para>
      <para>It would seem employees can contribute to projects but open source code cannot be used in Microsoft's products, to protect the company from unwanted licenses and IP claims. The PHP SQL Driver does not ship with Microsoft software and must be downloaded.</para>
      <para>Microsoft's new love for FSF licensing and PHP is not exactly unselfserving. The decision to work on PHP fits with the overall strategy of improving the language's interoperability with Windows and stemming the loss of PHP application deployments to Linux. LGPL allows code to be used with proprietary programs - such as SQL Server - unlike its GPL cousin.</para>
      <para>Also, while Ramji stressed support for ASF did not represent a move away on the web server from <ulink url="http://www.iis.net/">IIS</ulink>, it is a recognition of the rival <ulink url="http://httpd.apache.org/">Apache HTTP Web Server's</ulink> enduring number-one status on the web and Microsoft's desire to have it run on Windows instead of Linux servers.</para>
      <para>Also, in a measure of how far it's willing to contribute, Microsoft does not appear ready to have its engineers actually participate in open source groups, such as Eclipse.</para>
      <para>"Putting members in to Eclipse may or may not happen," Ramji said. He noted, though, Microsoft is keeping an eye on what it can do to help ASF's <ulink url="http://jakarta.apache.org/">Jakarta Project</ulink>.®</para>
      <para>Free Security whitepaper: The Need for Vulnerability Management</para>
      <para><ulink url="comments/">21 comments</ulink> posted — <ulink url="comments/#comment-form">Post a new comment</ulink></para>
      <section>
        <title>
          <ulink url="comments/#c_279213">April 1?</ulink>
        </title>
        <para>Posted: 18:15 25th July 2008</para>
      </section>
      <section>
        <title>
          <ulink url="comments/#c_279275">The MS-Linux distribution has not been release yet...</ulink>
        </title>
        <para>Posted: 20:08 25th July 2008</para>
      </section>
      <section>
        <title>
          <ulink url="comments/#c_279284">What The Hell?</ulink>
        </title>
        <para>Posted: 20:33 25th July 2008</para>
      </section>
      <section>
        <title>
          <ulink url="comments/#c_279339">Finally,</ulink>
        </title>
        <para>Posted: 22:14 25th July 2008</para>
      </section>
      <section>
        <title>
          <ulink url="comments/#c_279367">Beware of geeks bearing gifts</ulink>
        </title>
        <para>Posted: 23:05 25th July 2008</para>
      </section>
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